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A literary mystery came to me via a meme.
In this first instalment of a short series about three versions of Dracula, we familiarise ourselves with the plots of Dracula published by Bram Stoker in 1897; the Icelandic version Makt Myrkranna by newspaper editor Valdimar Ásmundsson, serialised in his newspaper Fyallkonan in 1900-1901; and the Swedish version Mörkrets makter by an author known only as A—e, and serialised in a couple of Swedish newspapers 1899-1900. {listen}
Ever misspelled a word or committed a typo? It wasn’t your fault; you were demonically possessed. Ian Chillag from Everything is Alive po
GUYS.
Guysguysguys.
There is a demon responsible for copying errors, typos, and gossip! Like, historically.
His name is Titivillus.
I cannot stop thinking about if this was one of Crowley's guises, or a minion, or a colleague/competitor ...
He was blamed for the Wicked Bible ("Thou shalt commit adultery") which is real and not made up by Sir Terry! There are little rhymey prayers to ward him off!
Worst yet he collects all your errors as you make them and then they are all waiting for you in Hell!
Fan Art pleeeeeeeez! And maybe Fics too!
When there were no safe spaces to be gay, Polari allowed gay men to identify and communicate with each other, and to keep things secret from
• When there were no safe spaces to be gay, Polari allowed gay men to identify and communicate with each other, and to keep things secret from outsiders.
• Professor Paul Baker, author of the Polari dictionary and the upcoming book Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language, explains how Polari emerged from criminal cant and London’s theatres and docks to be used a code language for gay men in the oppressive 1950s - and then, not long after, it entered the slang lexicons of the general public, via popular sketch comedy and the mouth of an annoyed princess.
• Thanks to this year’s Met Gala theme there has been a lot of discussion of ‘camp’ this week, and what constitutes camp. Here’s Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay ‘Notes on Camp’ that inspired the Met, and a rebuttal; attempts to define camp from Teen Vogue, Vox, W and the New York Times; exhausted and exhaustive Met Gala camp assessments from Tom and Lorenzo; and if that’s all too much, a fugue on camp.
• The unspeakable linguistics of camp
Sterling Martin was in grad school, studying C. elegans worms, when COVID19 hit and suddenly he found himself in lexicography, as part of a
Sterling Martin was in grad school, studying C. elegans worms, when COVID19 hit and suddenly he found himself in lexicography, as part of a team creating a Navajo-English dictionary of science terms.
Hans Asperger would have been merely "a footnote in the history of autism", so why did he get to be the eponym in Asperger's syndrome? Because along with the usual problems medical eponyms pose, and his work not really earning him the honour, he collaborated with Nazis and sent children to a hospital where they would be experimented on and even killed. Activist, writer and academic Morénike Giwa Onaiwu discusses the stigma around terms like Asperger’s syndrome and autism, and historian Edith Sheffer talks about Hans Asperger and child psychiatry in Nazi Vienna.
Chinese is one of the oldest still-spoken languages in the world. But when technologies arrived like telegraphy and computing, designed with the Roman alphabet in mind, if Chinese wanted to be able to participate then it had to choose between adapting, or paying a heavy price. And sometimes both were inevitable.
Jing Tsu, author of Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern, recounts how Chinese contended with obstacles like alphabetisation, Romanisation and standardisation.
Why would you write books or poems or plays with only one vowel? Or in palindromes? Or only using the example sentences in dictionaries? Sometimes you need to force yourself to jump a few hurdles (and perhaps the rest of the obstacle course) before your creativity will be unleashed.
This poetry detective tracks down word thieves. But are they all plagiarists?
I happened to listen to these two podcast back to back and I think they are actually great companion episodes. They are about creativity, the illusion of originality, and when is something really plagiarism.
Over the past few years, numerous products and places with the word 'plantation' in their names have rebranded. As for the word 'plantation' itself, architect and writer Kennedy Whiters of unredacthefacts.com advocates for replacing it with a more truthful term. She also watches out for use of the grammatical passive voice, because "It hides who did what to whom."
